Creatures of Ava is a casual adventure game that challenges gamers to explore an exotic world while solving puzzles and capturing creatures. But this isn’t a catch-‘em-all-and-battle type of game as much as it is a Noah’s Ark-style adventure.
The game kicks off with a researcher named Vic crashing her landing pod down on the colorful-but-imperiled world of Ava. Of course, she wasn’t planning on crashing, but she jumps into her mission nonetheless: Vic wants to rescue everyone and everything living here.
It seems that an encroaching virus is slowly spreading across the globe. And Vic and her fellow humans in the BioArk project are swooping in to hopefully save the day. This “withering” virus not only covers everything in a thorned, poisonous and rapidly growing vine, it also infects the animal life, turning them into angry, attacking beasts.
Vic’s job is to use robotic tech to beam healthy animals (and human-like residents if she can get them to agree) up to the Ark and whisk them away to the safety of another planet. And the young researcher gets some unexpected help. Vic stumbles early on upon some ancient messages from a race of people called the Antaris. This extinct culture has left behind an Antari staff that Vic can use to clear out withering vines and cure some of the effects of the virus.
Gameplay involves adventuring through and exploring the various world biomes; meeting tribes of the native populace and making friends; curing, taming and collecting creatures; and solving simple environmental puzzles to keep moving forward.
This is a single player game that doesn’t require an internet connection to play (other than the initial download).
Creatures of Ava is a colorful and inviting game. Vic’s desire to aid and rescue is foremost here. And younger players will easily connect her actions in the game to the idea of us needing to care for our real-world environment and its creatures. (This isn’t, however, the simple save-the-environment trope it initially appears to be, since the game also suggests that our efforts to control everything can sometimes be ill-informed.)
Even when angry animals attack, Vic doesn’t fight back and try to hurt them in return. This game is decidedly nonviolent. Instead, Vic uses the Antari staff to cure and calm those aggressive critters. Vic also uses a flute to match specific tones and make creatures happy and tame. (Animal lovers will enjoy Vic’s ability to pet, take pictures of, and connect with exotic, friendly, and sometimes very large critters.)
There’s nothing truly faith-focused or “Christian” about this game’s story. However, Creatures of Ava does use a fantasy spiritual connection—an ethereal presence that ties Ava’s people and creatures together—to lightly suggest that we humans don’t always understand everything in the world around us.
The story makes it clear that we can’t control the spiritual and physical transitions of life, no matter how we try. But we can sacrifice for others and give larger things over to something much bigger than us. In fact, flashback memories that Vic has of her parents’ self-sacrificial choice when she was a child inform the game story’s tender conclusion.
There are some explosive and destructive moments in the mix, as well as a scene where a girl loses her parents. We also see some very light hints of a same-sex attraction. And the human-like inhabitants of Ava are all non-gender and use the “they” pronoun.
Creatures of Ava comes with some potential problems. But this creature-collecting title will hold a charming appeal for a certain casual game-loving crowd.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
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